CINQUAIN

     Many new forms have been created by local poets over recent decades, including the cameo, the etheree, and the lil-ann.  
     Lee Ann Russell, in her helpful book How to Write Poetry (3rd edition, 2000), tells us  that cinquain is another of those recently invented forms, this one by Adelaide Crapsey. (Yes, that's really her name!)
     Cinquain is a 5-line structure with syllable count 2-4-6-8-2.  There are other, less popular, less frequently seen forms of cinquain, but the one usually called for in poetry contests is the 2-4-6-8-2
format.  

  Here's the example from Lee Ann Russell's book:

Promise

The barn
with golden hay
nestles within its eaves
a promise for the winter days
ahead.
(author not given)


Sometimes a contest brochure will call for a cinquain sequence.  This is a string of cinquains, all related to the subject of the poem.  Russell H. Strauss, current PST president, says that each cinquain in a sequence should not only work well as part of the sequence but should also be able to stand alone as a separate and distinct poem.  Russ provided the sample below.


The Last Prophet 

She limps
from that beating
so many years ago.
Gray coat, gray hair match gathering
rain clouds.


Pausing,
she wonders how
her mother would have looked
had Nazis allowed her to live,
to age.


Students
will ask questions.
Memories from those days
will wound her soul like painful probes
cut flesh.


Prophets
in Israel
did not merely predict.
They torched a nation with the fire
of words.


She knows,
if we forget,
man's darkness could return.
At ninety, she speaks to redeem
our world.


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